Ask Art: How high is up with lean?

January 18, 2017

Ask Art: How high is up with lean?

I love this question. And that’s because I have learned that there is no limit to the “up”.

Alice Lee, Hollie Jensen, Josh Howell, Karen Gaudet & Matthew Savas

By Rick Harris, Mike Rother, et al.

October 31, 2017 | 2 Comments

September 19, 2017 | 10 Comments

Can you explain more about how "picking was done by size and time, not by order" at the Toyota warehouse?

Dan, great question. The warehose was divided into three sections by the size of the parts to be picked, i.e., small, medium and large. Picking was done by blocks of time. In this case 10 minute pick cycles. The number of picks that could be done in 10 minutes was different for each area, small, medium and large but was a known number in each area and of course very repeditive. So if you knew how many picks you had for today and how many people you had doing the picking you would know how long it would take to do the work. Of course you still had to get the picked product consolidated back by customer and this required a couple of people to do this. This allowed for a second 100% quality check [in addition to the picker] and even though it may seem like an extra step the picking efficiency overall created big gains. In the Belgian warehouse of one of my portfolio companies for example we cut headcount by 42%, freed up 35,000 square feet of space, increased the number of picks per 10 feet of rack by 367% and cut shipping errors by 90%. Simple but effective.

Wow. That's remarkable!

Thanks for the explanation, Art. I really appreciate it.

Alice Lee, Hollie Jensen, Josh Howell, Karen Gaudet & Matthew Savas

By Rick Harris, Mike Rother, et al.

October 31, 2017 | 2 Comments

September 19, 2017 | 10 Comments

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